Archives for January 5, 2020

‘“That’s the difference between an elite team and just what happened to us, I guess,” defensive tackle Jordan Phillips said. “We didn’t make the clutch plays that we needed to make to stay in it.”’

‘Once again, the Bills found themselves with a seeming victory in hand, with a chance to continue their most promising season in recent memory. And then … poof! It was gone.’

‘“We’ve been in situations like that before. We knew we were playing against a good team today,” Hopkins said after the game. “We knew we came out in the second half and do what we had to do and execute on some things that we didn’t execute on in the first half. We knew we were going to have a shot to come out and win this game and that’s what we did.”’

‘The game joined the ranks of Bills losses all too difficult to forget. Andrews, at his equipment, buried his face in his hands. He had been ready for a last song but he said he was not prepared for a defeat as tumultuous as this, and he knew what all those men and women in Bills colors at the tables spread before him were feeling.’

‘“I had him,” Neal said. “When I hit him, I saw somebody hit him from the front and he just spun off. We hit him from the back and hit him from the front and he stayed up. It was a great quarterback play.”’

‘The Texans were booed off the field at halftime. Houston has been shut out in the first half at home, three times in the last five postseasons. That’s as many as the rest of the NFL combined.’

‘The Bills’ coverage was way too soft, including on the Texans’ third-and-18 conversion in which Johnson caught the ball well short of the first-down marker, but was able to get the necessary yardage. Defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier seemed worried about getting beat over the top. Overly so, because the team gave up too much underneath.’

‘”I’m 100% sure,” he said of his decision to hang up his cleats. “I’m not going to allow a game like this to factor into a decision that I made with my wife a while ago. Like I said, it’s about my family. I’m a man that holds my family in high regard. They’ve been with me the last 11 years of my career. It’s time. … Be a father, be a husband full time and be able to do it at a high level, because I am 36. This game is brutal, and the more I play, the more debilitating it will be on my body the older I get.”‘

‘”It’s sad,” said Stewart, who wore a Bills cap as she surveyed the scene. “It was just so exciting to feel all the energy around here, and now look at everybody.”‘

‘”The energy was so high to start and they let it slip away,” Cam Cecere of Rochester said. “Letting a 16-0 lead slip away is devastating. There were so many positives at the beginning of the game, too, and to let it slip away is sad.”‘